Surviving the Second Tier

Summary

Katie Lever — a PhD candidate and author of the novel “Surviving the Second Tier” — joins Lisa Stone to discuss the under-discussed realities of being a college athlete at a mid-major university. Lever ran track and cross-country for Western Kentucky University from 2012–2015, using a redshirt season in grad school. Her experience was a mixed bag: some of the best moments of her life, alongside scholarship threats, coach-driven injury suppression, and the dehumanizing experience of being valued solely for athletic performance when injured. The novel was born from the desire to pull back the curtain on college athletics in a way that narrative fiction achieves better than statistics. Lever is the third generation of her family to play college sports at WKU (grandfather played football, mother ran track), which gives her both an emotional connection to college athletics and a clear-eyed view of how the system has changed across generations. The episode targets prospective college athletes and their families with hard questions to ask during the recruiting process and explicit descriptions of what college athletics demands that recruiting pitches typically omit.

Guest Background

Katie Lever is a third-generation college athlete at WKU: her grandfather played football there, her mother ran track there, and her father shot rifle at the Citadel. She ran track and cross-country at WKU from 2012–2015, using a redshirt season during grad school. She experienced a difficult freshman year (academic-athletic imbalance, subsequent scholarship threat from a coach), a strong sophomore year with major personal records, and then injury-disrupted junior and senior years during which coaches pressured her to train through pain — leaving her with permanent hip damage. She is now a PhD candidate and first-time novelist; “Surviving the Second Tier” is her first book, written while completing doctoral research. She also does freelance writing on college athletics, Title IX equity, and athlete welfare.

Key Findings

1. College Sport Becomes a 20–40 Hour/Week Job

Lever’s primary message to prospective college athletes: the sport will feel like a job — demanding 20 to 40 hours per week of practice, travel, meetings, and physical training, on top of a full academic course load. Sacrificing social activities is normal; feeling rushed on academics is common. Her advice: never compromise academics for athletics, because under 2% of all college athletes play professionally, and the degree is the primary long-term return on the college athletic investment.

2. Scholarship Threats Are Real and Underreported

After a difficult freshman year — in which Lever struggled to balance athletic and academic demands — a coach pulled her aside and said: “If you don’t shape up next year, I’m going to pull your scholarship.” This threat is legal under NCAA rules and, Lever argues, more common than families realize. College coaches view athletes as having a “job” to do on the team; failure to perform that job can result in scholarship reduction or non-renewal. NCAA rules do not provide athletes with the workplace protections that would prevent this in any ordinary employment relationship.

3. Injury Management as an Ethical Flashpoint

Lever’s most serious critique of college coaching culture: after becoming injured, her coaches pressured her to train through debilitating pain. Tactics included: (1) pointing to teammates training through their own injuries (“she has a grade three hamstring tear and she’s still training, what’s your excuse?”), (2) accusing Lever of selfishness for not training, and (3) framing injury rest as letting the team down. She describes this as “gaslighting” — being made to feel like a bad athlete and bad teammate for experiencing a real physical injury. She has permanent hip damage she attributes to training through these injuries.

4. The Recruiting Experience vs. The Reality Gap

Lever describes the recruiting process as a performance: universities present their best face, coaches build genuine-seeming relationships, and the visit experience is carefully curated. The NCAA provides no mandatory transparency requirements that would force programs to disclose injury training culture, scholarship threat history, or the daily demands of the sport. Lever’s book was written to fill this transparency gap through narrative: statistics about Title IX equity gaps or athlete abuse testimonies “sometimes do not stick” — stories do.

5. Athletes Are Viewed as Production Units, Not People

When Lever was injured, the shift in how her coaches viewed her was immediate and stark: from praised, loved, holistically valued team member to deadweight who wasn’t contributing. She frames this as the fundamental structural problem of college athletics: athletes are not legally employees, but they are treated as employees when they underperform and denied employee protections when they’re exploited. The novel uses fiction to humanize this experience and “get readers emotionally invested in college athletes.”

6. Academic Sacrifice Is a Hidden Norm, Not an Exception

Lever explicitly names the temptation to take easier grades, cut academic corners, or let academic performance slip as pervasive — and cautions strongly against it. She notes that athletes who may be eyeing graduate school (as she was) need strong grades, not just the degree itself. Being a college athlete signals time management and discipline to admissions committees, but only if the GPA reflects actual academic engagement.

7. Third-Generation Perspective: The System Has Changed

Lever’s grandfather played football at WKU; her mother ran track. The generational comparison reveals how dramatically the commercialization and professionalization of college athletics has changed since those earlier eras. The demands, the scholarship structures, the coach-athlete power dynamics, and the monetization pressures have all intensified. This historical lens validates the episode’s framing that even families with college athletics experience may be unprepared for how the current system operates.

Actionable Advice for Families

• Ask directly during recruiting visits: “What happens if my child gets injured? What is the program’s policy on training through injury and on scholarship renewal after injury?” — programs that give vague answers to these questions are raising flags
• Understand that scholarship offers are annual renewals, not four-year guarantees in most cases; ask specifically whether the scholarship is a multi-year commitment and under what conditions it could be reduced or revoked
• Prospective athletes should meet current and former players on the roster (not just the ones the coach introduces you to) and ask candid questions about day-to-day life, practice culture, and how coaches respond to poor performance
• Never sacrifice academic performance for athletic performance — the degree has a higher long-term return than any athletic result for the 98%+ of college athletes who do not play professionally
• Read “Surviving the Second Tier” and follow Lever’s freelance writing on college athletics equity before making a college commitment

INTENNSE Relevance

• Player welfare as competitive advantage: INTENNSE’s model — salaried professional players, no academic-athletic split, no scholarship revocation threat — directly addresses the structural problems Lever describes; this is a meaningful point of differentiation for players choosing between attempting to go pro and returning to amateur college sport
• Athlete as whole person: Lever’s critique of coaches viewing athletes purely as production units maps to INTENNSE’s coaching philosophy opportunity — mic’d coaches who are broadcast personalities can model a different relationship, one that is visibly about player development, strategy, and wellbeing rather than institutional performance metrics
• Injury management visibility: INTENNSE’s close-camera, mic’d format creates accountability for how coaches interact with injured players in real time — coaches who treat players humanely during injury become broadcast assets; those who don’t are immediately visible; the format itself creates a welfare standard
• Recruiting pipeline ethics: Lever’s description of the recruiting process as a curated performance without transparency parallels what INTENNSE faces in player acquisition — establishing clear, transparent player contracts with fair terms around salary, playing time, and injury treatment will be a genuine competitive advantage in attracting players who have heard the Lever-style critique of existing professional structures
• College-to-pro bridge: The 98% statistic (under 2% of college athletes play professionally) underscores why INTENNSE’s bridge structure matters — most college athletes know they won’t play professionally, which raises the stakes for the tiny fraction who could; having a viable, salaried team professional option changes the cost-benefit of attempting to make that transition
• Narrative over statistics: Lever’s insight that narrative (fiction, story) lands better than statistics for changing behavior is directly applicable to INTENNSE’s content and marketing strategy — broadcasting compelling player and coach stories will build the audience INTENNSE needs more effectively than statistical arguments about format superiority

Notable Quotes

“Your sport in college will become a job. It is something that requires at least 20 to 40 hours of time throughout your week.”

“If you don’t shape up next year, I’m going to pull your scholarship.” — Coach to Lever after freshman year

“Instead of being praised and being viewed holistically as a person and feeling very loved on my team, I was just viewed in terms of what I wasn’t doing for the team. I was deadweight essentially.”

“College athletes aren’t employees, so we don’t get other workplace rights, but we do get the negative aspect of that.”

“Under 2% of all college athletes play professionally, regardless of their sport. The most important thing that you can do as a college athlete is focus on that degree and get that degree.”

“You can tell people here’s a statistic, here’s a testimony — for whatever reason, those facts and statistics sometimes do not stick. What if I tell people a story? What if I get them emotionally invested in college athletes?”